Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign team said Tuesday it’s a “lie” that she supports electric vehicle (EV) mandates, but her record on the issue suggests the opposite.
The Harris campaign blasted out an email ahead of Republican Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance’s Tuesday visit to Michigan, with campaign communications official Ammar Moussa writing that Vance would “undoubtedly lie” about things like the notion that “Harris wants to force every American to own an electric vehicle.” However, Harris backed EV mandates while serving in the U.S. Senate, and presided over the Biden administration’s massive spending and regulatory push to effectively force more EVs on the roads.
“Vice President Harris does not support an electric vehicle mandate,” Moussa wrote in the email. “Donald Trump railed against the Inflation Reduction Act while the Biden-Harris administration oversaw the creation of tens of thousands of new, clean energy jobs in Michigan and provided ground-breaking subsidies and tax credits for electric vehicles.”
Harris Campaign – EV Email by Nick Pope on Scribd
Then-Senator Harris was a co-sponsor of the Zero Emissions Vehicles Act in 2019, a bill that initially proposed to require 100% of new car sales to be EVs or otherwise be emissions-free by 2040. Harris later campaigned, during her failed 2020 presidential bid, on having all new car sales be zero-emissions models by 2035.
Harris was also the second-highest ranking member of the Biden administration while it pursued the biggest EV agenda in American history. The Biden administration has a goal of having EVs or other zero-emissions models make up 50% of new auto sales by 2030.
Regulatory agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) promulgated stringent regulations that will effectively force auto manufacturers to significantly increase the share of EVs and zero-emissions cars in their new fleets by 2032. Moreover, the administration is spending billions of dollars to boost EV production, adoption and charging infrastructure.
However, the administration’s EV agenda has not been especially successful to date, with consumers still hesitating to make the leap as manufacturers lose considerable sums of money on their EV lines and executives back away from some near-term production targets. Charging infrastructure remains concentrated primarily in more densely-populated coastal regions of the U.S., and a $7.5 billion program to build out charging infrastructure in parts of the country that need it most has so far resulted in only a handful of stations being built.
The Harris campaign did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
